


we always got the fight in us

by Tridraconeus



Series: penance [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: AU: Canon divergence, Fake Identities, Fever Dreams, Flashbacks, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Inappropriate Wound Care, PTSD, Royal Spy Thomas, Unreliable Narrator, implied csa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus
Summary: Thomas is ever-polite and hardworking, and if he get shot he doesn't hide the injury until it gets infected. Thomas is also a fool.





	we always got the fight in us

**Author's Note:**

> What is this I hear? Not self-indulgent or melodramatic enough? Welcome to Speck's meandering wish fulfillment: the series. Unbetaed and only lightly edited. Title from Ingrid Michaelson's [Afterlife](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_rQYdbLBO4) Also a good song: [Desert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er4l9y9BX3w) by Brand New.

Thomas, when he was younger, tended to hang on the outskirts and gather snippets of information. Blackmail, gossip he could trade for a snack or some coin. Dirty secrets that he kept for himself. Thomas, with messy hair and bright eyes, slid under the radar and kept his quiet vigil and pulled in secrets like a fishing net. It was no surprise that when he displayed the skill for it Daud made use of his talents in scouting, in a quiet blade sunk into someone's throat.

Working for the Crown, it was only a matter of time before Thomas uncovered a plot. It was only a matter of quick thinking that allowed him an in to thoroughly investigate it, too.

Thomas dressed himself like a gang member and slowly, over the course of a month, insinuated himself into the group. He learned names and connections and wrote them all down in a leather-bound journal. The small rebel group, composed of a slaughterhouse owner, a Gristol-born aristocrat, three Morleyan tradesmen and at least half of a street gang met in the basement of a pub three times a month. They talked about their plans and got drunk. They cursed out their teenage Empress and the remaining dregs of plague. 

It all-- uncomfortable clothes, detestable company, hatred bubbling in his heart and fear of discovery in his belly-- led him to this night. The Outsider himself couldn't have stirred up a better night than this one for causing trouble; the air was thicker and hotter than usual, and muggy from the marine layer rolling in from the ocean. The room buzzed with palpable tension and Thomas couldn't bring himself to mingle the way he had in the past. He sticked to the outskirts with a glass tumbler of whiskey and took periodic sips to dissuade conversation. The others in the tiny, musty room panted like excited hounds. They pushed and shoved each other, jostled, spilled sour-tasting whiskey on their clothes and the floor, and the more uncouth of them talked about what they planned to spend their next evening doing. Thomas stayed in the corner, by an audiograph innocently sitting on a low bar table. A blank card sat inside. Thomas, for all his caution, rightly guessed that by the time he placed it in the ones who truly cared about the cause were too drunk to notice and those who were there only for the drink and excitement didn't carry weapons or the grit needed to confront him. This was supposed to be a celebration, of course. Why anyone would celebrate before their cause had been achieved was beyond Thomas. 

Still, the revelry did a fine job at concealing his actions, so he thanked the Void and kept on. It only took a half hour before one of the ringleaders tapped a spoon too loudly against his glass and demanded a toast, and at that point Thomas clicked the audiograph machine on.

Thomas shifted himself as if he were interested-- it hid the audiograph machine from view and offered him a clearer line of sight to the speaker. He stood. Thomas idly thought about cutting off the obscenely hanging flaps of his jowls and cast the thought away as unnecessary and more than that, entirely immature. He sipped his whiskey and listened.

The audiograph kept recording and the speaker, the slaughterhouse owner with his small, piggish eyes and scarred face, remained none the wiser. 

*

“--hey, what are you up to?”

Thomas stared. Heat pierced his spine and he stiffened, turned to face the voice. The man, large-jawed and at least five inches taller, glared down at him. 

It was like a string broke. Thomas plucked the audiograph card from the machine and stuffed it in his pocket, then bolted for the stairs, shoving past knots of hazy-drunk gang members who cursed at him and ineffectively grasped at his clothes. A gunshot split the air. More, and bullets embedded themselves into the wood at his feet and sides, the majority flying wide. Thomas' side ached like he'd been punched, and he kept running until he could swing up into a fire escape and lose the spreading wave of insurgents below his feet. The audiograph stayed tucked safely against his side.

His Whaler's uniform hid blood. The drab colors and tough fabric kept him looking distant, untouchable, a shadow pulled from the Void and twisted into savage human shapes. This, though, was plain fabric and blood bloomed at his side all too visibly. Thomas couldn't stay crouched on a fire escape forever; Everett was expected, and he'd bleed out if he stayed here. He took off the secondhand vest without a second thought and settled into a neat cross-legged sit, drawing out his hidden blade and beginning to cut and tear it into strips. It wouldn't be too useful-- a staunch, mainly, just to halt the insistent flow of blood that showed on his coarse shirt. It was better than nothing. Better than leaving a blood trail. 

Thomas wrapped the strips around himself and, when he went to stand, nearly cried out in pain. Hot agony split his side at odds with the dull pulsing pain he'd dealt with while applying his rudimentary bandage. The thought of his painstakingly gathered information going stale because he'd allowed the targets to escape in a moment of pain spurred him into clutching the railing and hauling himself up. 

The journey back to the Tower was nearly a half-hour's walk. Thomas briefly wanted to cry. He had a report to write, a Spymaster and a captain to tip off-- weakness comes later. More than ever he wished for a Transversal. Left reliant on his own two feet, he eventually steeled himself to walk to the Tower.

*

“Where is your mother, boy?” The Overseer affected concern and his hand rested heavily on Thomas' shoulder. Thomas clutched a dirty coin in his filthy hand and stared at the cobble, willed himself not to shake. _Only the hounds smell fear,_ his friend's voice rang; she was smaller than him and with wild curly hair, one eye. The remaining eye was bright and mean. _They don't know if you don't let them._

“She's at the butcher's shop, sir. She gave me ten coin to buy some herbs at Wittle's Apocathery.” The lie came out easily enough. The Overseer patted his shoulder.

“Of course. Make sure you get back to her safely. Gangs are always on the prowl for defenseless little boys to make into their indentured mudlarks.”

Thomas did shake at that. The Overseer patted him again and shoved him, not unkindly, towards the apocathery. ”Run along, now.” 

Thomas did not run. He walked, slightly faster than he would have liked, and when he finally looked at the coin he stole it had been clutched so fervently that red indents lined his palm. 

*

Daud melted from the shadows. Thomas sat up in his bunk and dropped his legs over the side, wanting to call out but feeling his throat seize up entirely. Keenan was below him, asleep. Malia was reading a book, coiled up around a pillow in her bunk the last time he checked. 

Daud moved too slowly like a man wading through honey. His gait fell smooth and steady with none of the limp that his final battle with Corvo should have left him with, his skin lined with age and strain and the silvery grooved lines of his many scars. Thomas watched, mounting confusion dulling the complaining ache of his side. His eyes narrowed. Daud was here? 

_I have to warn Corvo_ , was his first thought, and a sharp sting of guilt pierced his chest and spread throughout in the manner of blood climbing fabric. And then _, I have to do something._

He slid off of the bunk and his feet met the cold stone beneath with a whisper of calloused skin. Daud didn't even look at him, still moving toward the door to the security closet. Every breath was a new challenge. Pain, a constant companion he's become reacquainted with, and sickening hesitation closed around his chest like a vise. He had no weapon. No Void powers. Daud had both, and no open wounds besides. 

Thomas refused to let common sense come in the way of his action. A more sensible him-- reliable, dependable Thomas-- would be aghast. As it was, he lunged forward and pinned Daud to the wall. His elbows hit the stone, his hands fisted in Daud's coat to keep him still-- surprisingly, Daud didn't go for his weapon. Thomas met his eyes. He looked away, as if stung, and instead focused on Daud's collar.

“Thomas,” Daud said, voice hazy and far away despite his face being a mere few inches from Thomas' bowed head. He sounded surprised, disappointed, like he expected better.

“Master,” Thomas responded, and pressed his hands on Daud's shoulders further against the wall-- whether in a feeble attempt to keep him there or a humiliating grasp at support he didn't try to discern. Daud's lips twisted into a disappointed frown. His hand snaked up from his side-- Thomas could swear he felt the rufflings of fabric-- and closed, tight, around his throat. He barely had to push and Thomas collapsed, knees buckling under his own weight. His side screamed. Thomas, himself, bawled out a pathetic, breathless crying noise. Red swept over his vision, followed by black. 

Daud moved on and Thomas surrendered to the dark. 

*

Assassins. Mercenaries, mostly, Thomas was told. Pirates. Highwaymen, too, and those who found killing as easy as drawing a breath. Still more claimed that the descending blades and attached men were spun from shadows and the Void. Thomas, in his stained shirt cleaned in the Wrenhaven's flow and with the itchy raised burns from River Krust acid, found himself hard-pressed to believe that one. 

But still, as he slipped smaller pearls that wouldn't be missed into his pocket, he wondered if the stories of men dissolving into ash were true. 

*

The part of him that wasn't rocking pitiably on the ground was ashamed of the part of him that was. He wanted to cry; he probably was crying, terrible salty tears mingling with the blood on his face and dripping into his mouth. The awful, grinding tune screeched in his ears and seized him from the inside like it was tearing his guts out through his throat. His nose was bleeding. Thomas wrapped his head in his arms and hunched down. He'd meant to come and find Misha, who had disappeared. His Bond, _severed_. Daud sent Thomas. 

The Abbey had music. The man who cranked the handle to the damned machine hummed in satisfaction and went to tightening it, punching new indentations, and Thomas only unfolded once he was sure the terrible noise wouldn't start again; then, he fled. Using the Void was like tugging a pulled muscle, a sharp pain of overwork and resistance but he kept going until he reached the yard in front of the Abbey and ducked into the sewer area, familiar as it could be.

Thomas barely kept from screaming, and dragged himself deeper into the outflow pipe. To a cache, where he promptly ripped his mask off, downed a vial of Sokolov's elixir. It settled thick and slimy in his stomach. His belly revolted. He retched, collapsed onto his elbows, and in the next minute saw the vibrant red fluid pour from his throat-- it didn't sting, it did its job that well at least-- and splatter onto the stone. It swam, reds mixing with cobble-brown and brackish water, his head spinning worse than when he Transversed too many times in a row. Thomas passed out next to a puddle of his own vomit, and silently resolved to never hear that grinding music again. 

*

It's the morning after the Fugue Feast, and Thomas was not alone in his bunk. Malia laid next to him. The sharp tang of whiskey sat on his tongue and he guessed, rightly, that it was on hers too; but there was no evidence of anything more than neighborly under the thin blanket and her hair was mussed only from sleep, her skin broken only by knives and scrapes.

“People like us,” she said, and Thomas nearly fell off the bunk when her voice broke the hazy silence, “we're nothing. We're no one.” 

His hand rested on her side. He dug his fingers into the skin there, past fabric, and hoped that it snapped her out of whatever hungover maudlin slump she'd fallen into. “I save the Empress' life one night and wash her sheets the next.” 

No such luck. He groaned, signaling his own awareness. She sighed. “We're not people, Everett. You're lucky; they didn't scrub you from records because you weren't there in the first place.” 

Her voice dropped raspy and soft. “I saw the casket they made for me. Drowning.” 

She must still be a little drunk. Thomas decided to solve the question of how she got into his bunk later. “At least I had a funeral.”

She yawned. Thomas hoped that she fell back to sleep quickly. The body heat wasn't entirely unwanted, in all honesty; her voice was a soft cadence rushing over his thoughts. He'd seen younger recruits sleeping against each other on night watch, and took great pleasure in alerting the captain on duty to go wake them up, and they were pursuing the same basic human closeness that Thomas normally denied himself, and denied others from himself. 

Malia yawned again and settled her forehead on his shoulder. He shifted his hand from her side to between her shoulder blades. “I'll shoot the ocean when you die.” 

“I'm thankful, Malia,” he said, and he was. 

*

Thomas woke in a place he had a none-too-comfortable acquaintanceship with; the infirmary. His side was properly bandaged and his mouth felt dry and tacky, the unpleasant fuzz of sleep toxin coating his tongue. Aches hummed for his attention but they weren't the rising and demanding screams from earlier. Assured that this wasn't another fever dream, Thomas raised his hands to scrub at his eyes and sighed at nothing in particular. Evidently having heard his stirring a white-black-gray-blue mass of fabric bundled itself into the room. Thomas rubbed his eyes again and resigned himself to a severe chiding when the fabric began to speak. 

“That was exceedingly irresponsible of you, Everett. You know that you won't be asked questions if you come here for treatment.”

The fuzzy shape soon consolidated itself behind a smooth and firm voice. Thomas rubbed his eyes again and finished picking out the sharp features of one of Sokolov's former students, a physician by name of Joan. She laid the backside her hand flat against Thomas' forehead, still talking in a voice entirely too close to a scold. 

“You could have died. Keenan told me you were hitting the wall and then you collapsed, mumbling total gibberish. That's signs of a high fever and possible hallucinations, Everett.” She paused and then said, almost absentmindedly, “You're a guard who tangled with the Hatters, by the way.” 

As all of the Empress' spies, when injured he received suitable alibis while laid up in the infirmary. It wasn't something he was proud of or enjoyed. A necessary evil and not much more. 

“And Jameson Curnow is here to talk to you.” Joan finished and finally patted his cheek, rather roughly. He nodded. “I'll give you a minute and send him in.” 

Just like that, she left in a swirl of fabric leaving Thomas suitably chastised and rather confused with the influx of information on his strained and weary mind. Still, he'd caught enough to start steeling himself for either exuberant platitudes or a professional dressing-down-- all depending on which guise Jameson was wearing today. Thomas groaned and tried to sit up. His side ached dully with the movement, and he reluctantly decided against it. 

Jameson pushed inside a minute or two later, dressed in courtly clothes that they both knew he hated. He wore a jacket in robin's-egg blue and dark grey slacks, the overall effect making him look older than he was. Thomas sat up in the cot and fought against his own aches until he could lean against the wall. 

“So,” he began. Thomas sighed. Undaunted, Jameson forged on. “You had a little accident.”

“Don't tell Corvo,” is what Thomas settled on, resigned and ashamed. In all honesty he hadn't expected it to get that bad. Sokolov and Piero's solution, as effective as it was at curbing the plague, managed to pinpoint that and no longer mended his general aches; or so it seemed. His gulp of elixir didn't help. His old habits didn't serve him anymore, which he should have found helpful but instead it just made an empty part of him ache. 

Jameson sat nearly beside Thomas on the chair placed suspiciously close to Thomas' bedside. “I won't. But he needs to know somehow that you're out of commission--”

Thomas curled his lip to show his teeth, unfairly grumpy when Jameson only meant well. “Your word, Jameson.” 

“You have my word.” Jameson raised both hands harmlessly and smiled, a dazzling affair of sparkling, slitted eyes and white teeth. Thomas halfway resented him for being so chipper while Thomas felt like he'd crawled to the Void's doorstop and been unceremoniously booted from the stoop. “I'll leave you to recover, but once you can move under your own power Lord Attano and I have a mission for you.” 

Thomas nodded. “And when should I be recovered by?” Most other people would see it as a jab; Jameson, who had experience working with Thomas under his belt, understood. 

“You have a week. Two days here as you're treated.” Jameson swept hair out of his eyes and stood, stretching his fingers out, clenching them into fists. “Best wishes, Everett. I do hope you survive Joan better than you survived the bullet.”

Jameson left the room chased by a good-natured curse. 

*

Daud wanted him here. Thomas longed for his mask. It was a true test of his skill, slipping undetected into the grounds, but finding a job was easy enough. Thomas was one of Daud's favored scouts and lieutenants for a reason, after all. He lived on merit and black magic. For now-- a brief stretch of time he'll spend in reconnaissance and familiarizing himself with the many crannies and bolt-holes of Dunwall Tower-- he would have to live solely on merit.

Dunwall Tower, however clean and bright the Empress kept it, could not escape the shadow of plague. Thomas saw it in the haggard faces down in the kitchens, the tired sloped shoulders of the Royal Guard. He trimmed hedges and folded laundry, stole correspondence and forged requisition letters. Once he was pulled from the hall to the kitchen to deliver dinner to Sullivan, the Interrogator. The mute looked at him with piggish and beady eyes. Something in Thomas' heart flipped, clenched, and he hurried from the room.

After that moment, hatred started to burn hot and low in his belly and for days he did nothing but stoke it. For what seemed to be the longest time, fury defined his life. The charm pressed against his breast fuzzed people's memories of him, but whatever cracked and blackened the pearly spokes of bone twisted him somehow, too. Overseers eyed him strangely but sure enough their eyes then skimmed over him, curiosity misdirected. The Bond _ached_. 

Thomas did not want to be consumed by irrational anger. He prided himself on stability, reliability-- crumbling now? No. He wouldn't. He _couldn't_. 

*

“Good to have you back, Everett.” Corvo looked up from his ledger. Jameson must have told him, the damn sneak. Thomas bowed, brief and at his chest. None of it mattered. His side was healed; his mind, though strained and frazzled, cooled at the prospect of something to set itself towards. No buzz of magic flowed through his veins, no facsimile of a Mark crowning the back of his hand like a bruise. It was just him, now. Just him and his damned loyalty. 

“It's good to be back, sir.” 

 


End file.
